emotional fallout
Jan. 13th, 2015 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
houraipeachSo, it's probably no surprise that I'm still feeling pretty fucked-up over my trip to see my family for the holidays. Between the completely bullshit strip-search from the TSA to dealing with them, I'm in kind of a bad state right now and the usual measures I take to drag myself up aren't quite working.
See, my family is really good at the whole guilt thing. And because they're the sort of family that never, like, learned to ACTUALLY deal with their emotions because they grew up in the 50s, their primary outlets for frustration are 'teasing' and 'telling other people their business.' Every single DAY of the trip, whatever else happened, was about 20 bazillion needling little comments about my sense of dress, my job history, why I haven't 'found a nice girl yet,' my hobbies, and my taste in just about everything under the sun. I desperately hope they never find out about my sex life, because I know damn well I'd never live it down.
And the thing is, while THEY can easily shrug this stuff off because they've been doing it since they were six years old and have developed thick calluses where their emotions should be, I do not have the same ability. Which means that for the past week and a half since getting back home, I've been in a state of more-or-less constant animal panic over anything anybody says to me at all that doesn't instantly read as 'I agree with you completely.' I've been acting paranoid, twitchy, and skittish and I can't seem to actually DISARM my alert response. And that bothers me because it's turning things I would otherwise enjoy into things that make me a nervous wreck.
I don't really have anything useful to say here. I can't afford therapy or meds, and none of this is really on other people behavior-wise. I do know that I have the equivalent of a flooded basement full of toxic sewage in my brain that I extremely need to get pumped out, but what there is to actually do about that is beyond me. Weed and liquor haven't helped, and neither has companionship. It's starting to drive me fucking crazy, because I can't talk to anyone about anything without startling, wanting to flee the room, or developing the urge to punch something until my hand breaks. Worse than that, I feel like a miserable shit because I'm terrified I'm a danger to others because of how often my frustration and anger turns to 'I want to destroy something.'
So no, I really don't know what to do about this. Everybody has been wonderful, I'm not asking for anything more in terms of people's time or energy. I guess I'm just warning folks that I'm feeling really volatile and paranoid; approach with caution, if at all.
See, my family is really good at the whole guilt thing. And because they're the sort of family that never, like, learned to ACTUALLY deal with their emotions because they grew up in the 50s, their primary outlets for frustration are 'teasing' and 'telling other people their business.' Every single DAY of the trip, whatever else happened, was about 20 bazillion needling little comments about my sense of dress, my job history, why I haven't 'found a nice girl yet,' my hobbies, and my taste in just about everything under the sun. I desperately hope they never find out about my sex life, because I know damn well I'd never live it down.
And the thing is, while THEY can easily shrug this stuff off because they've been doing it since they were six years old and have developed thick calluses where their emotions should be, I do not have the same ability. Which means that for the past week and a half since getting back home, I've been in a state of more-or-less constant animal panic over anything anybody says to me at all that doesn't instantly read as 'I agree with you completely.' I've been acting paranoid, twitchy, and skittish and I can't seem to actually DISARM my alert response. And that bothers me because it's turning things I would otherwise enjoy into things that make me a nervous wreck.
I don't really have anything useful to say here. I can't afford therapy or meds, and none of this is really on other people behavior-wise. I do know that I have the equivalent of a flooded basement full of toxic sewage in my brain that I extremely need to get pumped out, but what there is to actually do about that is beyond me. Weed and liquor haven't helped, and neither has companionship. It's starting to drive me fucking crazy, because I can't talk to anyone about anything without startling, wanting to flee the room, or developing the urge to punch something until my hand breaks. Worse than that, I feel like a miserable shit because I'm terrified I'm a danger to others because of how often my frustration and anger turns to 'I want to destroy something.'
So no, I really don't know what to do about this. Everybody has been wonderful, I'm not asking for anything more in terms of people's time or energy. I guess I'm just warning folks that I'm feeling really volatile and paranoid; approach with caution, if at all.
